Outburst of the Daytime Craterids meteor shower

Posted on Wed 28 August 2013 in meteors

I am currently attending the Meteoroids 2013 conference in Poland. At the meeting, Prof. Peter Brown has just alerted us to the fact that the Daytime Craterids meteor shower has unexpectedly been detected by the Canadian Meteor Orbit Radar (CMOR) this morning. You can see the radar detection for yourself at http://fireballs.ndc.nasa.gov/cmor-radiants/

Daytime Craterids detected by CMOR.

Daytime Craterids (DCR) detected by the Canadian Meteor Orbit Radar (CMOR).

This same shower has previously shown outbursts in 2003 and 2008, but not in other years. A recent paper by Wiegert et al. discussing these surprise appearances is available at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2966.2011.18432.x/pdf

If the previous outbursts are anything to go by, the shower might last for several days and still increase in activity. Whether this might produce visible meteors at optical wavelengths is essentially unknown, but amateur astronomers at Southern latitudes are strongly encouraged to keep an eye out for earth-grazing meteors near sunset.

The animation below indicates areas on the Earth where the radiant of the Daytime Craterids will be above the horizon, and the Sun below the horizon, over the next day. As the name suggests, the radiant of the Daytime Craterids is located near the Sun and is hence very difficult to observe.

Daytime Craterids visibility.

Areas in the world where earth-grazing Daytime Craterids might be visible.